Drug shortages hit hospitals

Tuesday

May 31, 2011 at 12:01 AMMay 31, 2011 at 10:37 AM

WASHINGTON - A growing shortage of medications for a host of illnesses including cancer, cystic fibrosis and cardiac arrest has hospitals scrambling for substitutes to avert harm to patients, and sometimes even delaying treatment.

WASHINGTON - A growing shortage of medications for a host of illnesses including cancer, cystic fibrosis and cardiac arrest has hospitals scrambling for substitutes to avert harm to patients, and sometimes even delaying treatment.

"It's just a matter of time now before we call for a drug that we need to save a patient's life and we find out there isn't any," said Dr. Eric Lavonas of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

The problem of scarce supplies isn't a new one but it's getting markedly worse. The number listed in short supply has tripled in the past five years, to a record 211 medications last year. While some of those have been resolved, an additional 89 drug shortages have occurred in the first three months of this year, says the University of Utah's Drug Information Service.

At Miami Children's Hospital, doctors had to postpone for a month the last round of chemotherapy for 14-year-old Caroline Pallidine, because of a months-long nationwide shortage of cytarabine, a drug considered key to curing a type of leukemia.

"There's always a fear, if she's going so long without chemo, is there a chance this cancer's going to come back?" said her mother, Marta Pallidine.

There are lots of causes - recalls of contaminated vials trouble importing raw ingredients, spikes in demand, factories that temporarily shut down for quality upgrades.

Some experts pointedly note that pricier, brand-name drugs are seldom in short supply. The Food and Drug Administration agrees that the overarching problem is that fewer and fewer manufacturers produce these older, cheaper generic drugs, especially the harder-to-make injectable ones. So if one company has trouble - or decides to quit making a particular drug - there are few others able to ramp up production to fill the gap, said Valerie Jensen, who heads FDA's shortage office.

No one is tracking patient harm. But last fall, the nonprofit Institute for Safe Medication Practices said it had two reports of people who died of the wrong dosage of a substitute painkiller during a morphine shortage.